This Is How You Die Page 17

  There had been others, many others in fact, even ones that I hadn’t met online or in the classifieds, and there were many reasons why I had not been linked with their deaths. I once killed a neighbor who had persisted to annoy me with loud music night and day. I crept in through a window the morning after a party and beat him to death with a baseball bat while his girlfriend was passed out on the sofa. I left no evidence and no fingers were pointed my way. In my earlier days, when my confusion regarding my sexuality was a little more problematic, I paid to have sex with a prostitute. She saw my youth and my naïveté and she made an incorrect assumption that she could manipulate me and rob me. She told me that if I didn’t pay her double, then her pimp would beat me up. She was dirty. A skinny addict with rotting teeth and a rotten soul. And although I enjoyed killing her, I didn’t want the credit.

  The talkative, egotistical prick whose penis I now had in a jar had less than a hundred quid in his wallet, inside which was a picture of his wife and two kids. They looked happy, but death had a way of bringing the skeletons out of the closet, and although he would have preferred it a different way, he would get his chance to be the openly gay man that he professed to be. There were a number of credit cards in there that I would find a use for, and in his other pocket was a vial of morphine and a capped syringe. It wasn’t what I had been expecting, but perhaps it fit the bill. He probably thought it was cooler and more upmarket than heroin or cocaine.

  The parts that identified him would be eradicated and the rest, whatever was left, would be tossed into a bath of highly corrosive acid. His existence had been extinguished in a heartbeat, and his memory would be wiped off the face of the earth in a similarly short time. Everything that he had done, everything that he had tried to be and everything that he ever would be, was now pointless, cast into the dust of life along with the physical remains that tied him there. The idea of life being so fickle scared a lot of people, but it fascinated me. Life is something that we hold so dear, something that literally means everything to us, yet it is so fragile, so fleeting, so utterly pointless. My existence will be a little less pointless, of course, and when I do slip off this mortal coil, my memory will remain.

  ——

  “That’s some pretty potent stuff you’re buying.”

  A fellow customer was looking at me. A peppy prick with a 1950s quiff and clothes better suited to an aging hillbilly with a passion for chewing tobacco and fucking with the English language was looking at me. He was judging my purchases as though I weren’t carrying a knife and a severe distaste for the human race.

  “Excuse me?” I said.

  “The acid.” He nodded toward the vat I had just removed from the shelf. “Are you trying to hide a corpse or something?”

  Why, do you want to volunteer?

  I returned his smile and gave him the cheery small talk he sought. “Yeah, my wife. I’ve finally had it with her cooking and figure I’d make a fresh start.”

  He chuckled. “Going for a newer model, eh?”

  “Of course.”

  “Can’t blame you, I need one of those myself. Well, good luck to you.”

  I smiled as he walked away. “You too,” I said, wondering if I should follow him, kill him, and give his wife the opportunity to get herself a new husband. Small talk is the bane of my existence, giving people the assumed right to butt into other people’s lives. Altruism and politeness is dead, and once everyone realizes that and gets on the same page, then the world will be a better place.

  I dropped the vat on the counter and dug out some cash, stolen from the wallet of the guy who talked me to death and then provided me with a little memento for my collection. There was something so wonderfully ironic about using his money to pay for his eradication.

  “Lovely day out there, isn’t it?”

  For fuck’s sake. Not another one.

  “Yeah,” I said vaguely. “Sun and everything. All good.”

  Now fuck off before I kill you and burn your store to the ground.

  He gave me a serious look, wondering for a moment if I was playing around, if there was something wrong with me, or if that was just how I talked. It was probably a mixture of all three.

  “You hear about the news?”

  Nothing like a vague question to force me into a conversation I don’t want to be in.

  “No, what news?”

  “The Masquerade,” he said, immediately grabbing my attention. “They reckon they know who it is.”

  “Bollocks.”

  He gave me another look and I tried to smile away my snappy response. It seemed to work.

  “It’s true. A detective reckons he has the case all figured out, some Keats bloke or something. He says he knows who it is.”

  That amused me. I liked Keats, but he didn’t have a clue. He was one of the detectives assigned to my case. One of many, but the one I liked the most. I made it my business to learn about my adversaries and I knew all there was to know about him. I knew that his wife had died many years ago. I knew he had a daughter named Annabelle and a son named Damian. I knew he had a mother who lived not too far from the dive I once called home and, thanks to his daughter’s willingness to open up to strangers online, her desire to post everything she ate, thought, and did on social media pages, I knew that his kids hated him and had pissed off to the grandmother’s house, or whoever else would have them, at every opportunity. I also knew he wasn’t capable of finding me. If he were, then I wouldn’t be buying a vat of acid to wipe another corpse from the face of the earth.

  The shop owner hadn’t finished talking. “You remember that spree killing in that little town a few years go? Whitegate, I think it was called.”

  My face dropped at that point. I was sure it was noticeable, but I couldn’t help it. “Vaguely,” I said slowly, fearing the worst.

  “Well, he reckons The Masquerade and that lad are two and the same.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “It’s true.”

  Fuck. Off.

  I paid for the acid and left the shop as quickly as I could. I dumped my purchase into the backseat of my car and headed for the newsstand across the street.

  “Oh, you again.”

  It was the prick who had served me the previous day. I had kept my cool then, but as I picked up a newspaper and he waited to berate me, I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it again. Lester Keats was plastered all over the front page and my heart sank into the pit of my stomach when I saw the headline: WHITEGATE SPREE-KILLER IS BACK.

  How the fuck did he figure it out?

  I ripped open the first page, quickly scanning the story. The news report hadn’t come from Lester. It had been leaked by an inside source. There were no official lines on it yet, but there didn’t need to be. They were right—they had their man and it would take a miracle to divert their attention from the truth. It didn’t mean much for me—the memory of the boy I had been was just as elusive as the man I became—but it was the first sign of weakness, the first indication that the people in charge of finding me weren’t as incompetent as I thought they were.

  I jumped when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I dropped the newspaper and turned to see Scott, the shop assistant, standing next to me, his eyes flaring with determination. This was his moment to shine, his moment to do right and put the wrongdoers in their place. After all, I read a newspaper without paying. That was probably worthy of capital punishment in his eyes. This was his chance to become a vigilante like the heroes in the comic books he so fervently masturbated to every night.

  “I told you not to—”

  I hit him. It was an instinctive response, and one borne of surprise and anger. I had let the moment get to me, taking it out on him in one swift and powerful blow. He fell backward and only just managed to maintain verticality before stumbling into a magazine rack. He held a hand to his face as a look of astonishment spread over his gaunt features.

  It wasn’t enough to put him down and he came at me, his eyes alight with vengeance and justic
e. I stopped him quickly by thrusting my hand into his throat. He dropped to the floor, choking and gagging, struggling to suck air into his lungs.

  I bent down beside him, the adrenaline pumping, the anger still coursing through me. “I want to do so much more to you right now,” I told him. “So count yourself lucky that I’m going to turn around and walk out of this shop.”

  “You. Have. To. Pay. For. That,” he spat in broken breaths, throwing a hand toward the paper in my hand.

  I could feel the knife in my pocket, almost begging me to use it. Not since Darren Henderson had I wanted to kill someone so badly. I slid my hand into my pocket and felt the handle against my palm, but I was interrupted by the jingle-jangle of the bell above the door as someone entered the shop.

  It was the man I had spoken to in the hardware store. He smiled when he saw me and then that smile vanished when he saw the shop assistant on his knees in front of me.

  “Is everything okay here?” he asked.

  I grinned and took my hand out of my pocket. “Asthma attack,” I told him, standing up and brushing myself down. “He’ll be fine.”

  I was furious and I wasn’t used to sitting and stewing on my anger, I wasn’t used to not being able to vent. I left the shop in a hurry, brushing past the baffled man in the doorway and listening to the choked gags of the flunky on the floor. I tossed the newspaper into the car, clambered behind the wheel, and then hit the road. The have-a-go-hero in the newsstand wouldn’t feel my vengeance, certainly not in the way I wanted, but someone would.

  2

  I drove for hours, my destination first unknown, but later very clear. I cruised through what passed for red light districts and what passed for prostitutes. These women didn’t charge much, and you definitely got what you paid for.

  “Twenty bucks for the lot,” one of them barked into the car as I approached and rolled down the window.

  “The lot?”

  She gestured to herself, the yellowed fingers on her emaciated hands seemingly pointing out her worth.

  “Twenty bucks can buy me a lot in this day and age. What makes you think I should spend it on you?”

  “Excuse me?” She was even uglier when she looked confused. She could have made a decent living as an extra in a horror movie, or scaring teenagers away from shopfronts.

  “Why should I purchase your services over all of these fine ladies?” I asked, nodding through the front window to the small cluster of half-naked woman gathered around a lamppost and looking like they were one degree away from losing a limb.

  “Are you right in the head?”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at that one. I rolled up the window and intended to ignore her, but she banged on it. She had an impatient look on her face that made her look even uglier than when she was confused. She really didn’t have much going for her.

  “Are you just gonna drive away?” she asked when I rolled the window down again. “Are you just here to fuck with me? I’m a professional woman, you know. I deserve respect.”

  I was just fucking with her. I felt better about myself when I talked to people like her. Society was pretty uninspiring to begin with, but people like her were the worst. They were the leeches, the pests. They were not parasites, as many would suggest—parasites are admirable creatures. They take control of the living and they live through them, essentially hiding in the shadows, stealing their nutrients, drinking their life-force. I was a parasite, and I was proud to call myself that, but these, these people would need to go through several stages of evolution to be deemed worthy of kissing the ground that I pissed on.

  “You’re a professional, are you? Well, why don’t you give me your business card and I’ll get back to you if—”

  I paused when she reached into her bosom and produced a card. At that moment, she had more of my respect than I had ever given to anyone like her. I took the card and gave her a nod of approval.

  Touché, you dirty little pest.

  She stood back and waited for me to drive away, a proud expression on her gaunt face. That was one of the few expressions that didn’t make her look ugly, but it was also likely to be the one she used the least. I actually felt some sort of inclination to do something with her, even something sexual, but I reminded myself how unpleasant that would be and moved on.

  I had a destination by then, but I took things at a leisurely pace, using the time to calm myself and stop myself from doing anything stupid. As superior as I was to many other people in this world, I was still human and therefore susceptible to human emotions. I got angry, I made mistakes. The only difference was that I could often anticipate that anger and act accordingly. I was in tune with my body and could see moments of rage coming. In the newsstand, the anger had been a surprise and I had acted out of line, but those moments were rare.

  Even as a child, I had been able to control my emotions more than most, making me infinitely more intelligent and worthy than any of my peers. Of course, I was never deemed to be a particularly intelligent child. The intelligence was there; they just didn’t see it. It was that cognitive superiority that had helped me restrain my anger when Darren and his half-witted friends had beaten me day after day. Instead of acting out, getting involved, and putting my plans into jeopardy, I had let them do as they wanted while I waited and plotted.

  I had never excelled in my classes and although it wasn’t intentional, I like to think that my subconscious mind stopped me from doing so, understanding the problems that would arise with being seen as an extraordinary child possessed of the greatly developed brain that I had.

  I parked the car in a densely populated car park and made my way into the center of the town. This was a nightlife hotspot, where several residents from nearby towns and villages spent the night on the dance floor. They saw it as the ultimate destination, the entertainment capital of their little world, but only because it had more than one nightclub and most of the bars served neon-colored, gasoline-strength booze for the price of a bottle of pop.

  It was late evening and other than the bars and nightclubs nothing was open, indicating the cars in the parking lot belonged to the drinkers and that even without my assistance a few of the dim-witted locals were going to die tonight. I encountered some of them on the street—young males wearing matching short-sleeved shirts, despite the arctic conditions, and stinking to high heaven of knock-off deodorant. They had clearly been bathing in the stuff, but it was probably cheaper than bath foam.

  The women were just as bad. Dressed like the prostitute I had run into earlier, only with higher heels and more perfume—a little more upmarket, but probably a lot cheaper. By the end of the night, they would be opening their legs for some deodorant-drenched bro because he bought them a bottle of Barcadi Breezer.

  “Take a picture, it lasts longer,” one of the bitches barked when she saw me looking at her legs, visible underneath a ridiculously short skirt and reddened from the intense cold. They looked like a pair of chorizo sausages and probably tasted just as funky.

  “You got a problem?” she persisted when I didn’t reply and continued to stare. The night had only just begun but she was already drunk. It was a shame I wouldn’t be there to witness the moment she wet herself, passed out on the street, and was felt up by a horny bouncer with low standards.

  “I have many problems,” I told her. “And clearly I’m not the only one.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She was getting louder and shriller by the moment. She was with two friends, both the same age, with the same dress sense and the same level of drunkenness. She was clearly the outspoken one, the one likely to brand herself as the “crazy one,” which to her was a good thing. She was the one who got drunk every weekend, vomited and shit on herself, and then proclaimed it to be a great night. In her eyes, she was the life and soul of the party, the optimistic and happy one; in the eyes of everyone else, she was a miserable, annoying tart, only devoid of self-loathing because she had yet to realize just how much the world h
ated her.

  “Save your anger for tonight,” I told her. “When the guy you suck off in the alleyway tells you that no, he doesn’t want your phone number and no, he doesn’t want to see you again. Save it for the bouncer who refuses to let you into the club because of the vomit and cum stains on your shirt. Save it for your reflection in the mirror tomorrow morning when you realize that your night on the town cost you half a month’s rent, two friends, a brand new dress, and all the self-esteem you’ve ever managed to muster since you dragged your skanky ass out of high school.”

  Her mouth was agape, but her friends were smiling. I had either hit the nail on the head or they had been waiting for someone to put her in her place for a long time. She stuttered and stumbled and then, realizing that she was about to lose face, she increased the volume and the tempo of her voice. “What did you say?”

  I laughed, shook my head, and walked away.

  “Yeah, you better fucking run,” I heard her shout before immediately bragging to her friends.

  I thought about having a drink in one of the clubs, but failed to find one that wasn’t filled with sweaty idiots. Instead I sat on a nearby bench and watched the hordes of revelers go about their business. I saw the worst of the worst, the shit scraped from the barrel of life and left to ferment in this country’s small towns and cities. The vast majority of them were young, often no older than twenty, and a large number were in their early teens. I had no issue with underage drinking, far from it. If these kids were going to turn into their parents, and most of them did, then the sooner they killed themselves, the better.

  One of those kids caught my eye, but for reasons that weren’t entirely random. She was young, blonde, cute. She was naturally beautiful, that much was evident, but that beauty had been scarred and blemished by makeup an inch thick. It was obvious that her mother was either just as dimwitted as she was, or that she had passed away years ago and hadn’t been there to tell her daughter the basics of how not to look like a whore.